Scribbling Calculations

by Michele daSilva

Everything is math. I write every dollar down in my notebook, line after line and page after page of scribbling calculations. Punch the smooth numbers of the calculator with my right hand and knead the knots in my neck with my left until my wrist feels like it’s going to fall off. I think there was a moment when everything was fine, when I didn’t owe anything, but it’s been five years since, and I have to get out of the house, so I go for a walk downtown and look for help-wanted signs stuck in big glass windows. I see the Salvation Army man standing on the other side of the freezing street, and I think about the t-shirts I used to steal from the thrift store in Poughkeepsie even though they only cost fifty cents each, and I have some money in my back pocket for coffee, but I walk across instead and slip it into the shiny red kettle. Maybe it’ll come back to me, and if not, oh well; what’s another five bucks?